The Creative Nonfiction Podcast with Brendan O'Meara

"A certain sort of dogged obsessiveness seems to help. I remember hearing Tobias Wolfe speak once that talent is wonderful  and widely distributed on Earth, but sitting down and putting in the hours is where it's at," says Mary Margaret Alvarado, who wrote "That's Somebody's Son" for The Atavist. It's a little later than planned, but here we feature Mary Margaret Alvarado's piece for The Atavist Magazine titled "That's Somebody's Son: Three Mothers, One Struggle: saving their children with schizophrenia." It's a piece that that Mia, as Mary Margaret goes by, pitched more than a year ago and it was rejected. But Mia went back to the drawing board, basically wrote the entire thing, came back, and boom here we are. We're going to hear from Seyward Darby about her side of the table and why this piece was at first rejected and that special feeling when a great pitch comes across the transom. Mary Margaret Alvarado is a multi-faceted writer with her poetry and nonfiction appearing in The Iowa Review, The Kenyon Review, VQR, Outside, and The Georgia Review, among other publications. She is the author of the poetry collection Hey Folly [https://www.dosmadres.com/shop/hey-folly-by-mary-margaret-alvarado/] and the nonfiction book American Weather [https://springs.rawtools.org/product/american-weather-book/]. She lives in Colorado. In our chat we talk about: * Dogged obsessiveness * Cold drafts * Ambition * Trust * Reimagining the MFA * And stocking produce Promotional support: The 2026 Power of Narrative Conference. Use narrative20 at checkout for 20% off your tuition. Visit combeyond.bu.edu. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"To be a good writer, you have to really get into the visceral parts of the experience, right? You have to bring someone into that experience with you, which requires you to go back and understand every detail, every memory, all the visceral aspects of the experience, the sounds, the smells, everything that was happening," says Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break. Today we have Jane Marie Chen, author of Like a Wave We Break: A memoir of Falling Apart and Finding Myself. It's published by Harmony. It's a book whose ancestor is very clearly Eat, Pray, Love. A story of the cost of achievement and ambition, how childhood trauma permeates deep into adulthood, and the long nonlinear road to  healing.  Jane, being the entrepreneur she is, has quite the ecosystem around her memoir. At her website, there's a self-worth quiz. I don't feel like failing, so I'm not gonna take it. If I can't copy off the smart kid, then why take the test, am I right? She does speaking and leadership coaching, workshops on building resilience, and she recently delivered a TED talk about resilience. Jane is the former CEO and co-founder of Embrace Global, which developed infant incubators that helped more than 1,000,000 babies, many of which would have died without this technology. She was recognized as Forbes Impact 30 and receive the Economist Innovation Award, Fast Company Innovation Award, and the World Economic Forum Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She has an MBA from Stanford and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard. Didn't I just have some clown on the show who studied at Yale and Harvard. What the fuck am I doing? If I don't feel inadequate, I don't feel alive, man. You can learn more about Jane at janemariechen.com [http://janemariechen.com/] and follow her, let's just say on the gram, at janemarie.chen. In this podcast, we talk about: * How she wrote the book to help people * The importance of surfing in her life * What's enough? * Burnout * Writing the visceral * Zooming in and Zooming out * Playing with timelines * Working with a collaborative writer * Writing to leave the past in the past * And not wanting to write a prescriptive memoir Some pretty rich shit, man, parting shot on, shit if I know, so let's queue up the montage. Here's Jane Marie Chen, huh! Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"My teenage daughter looked at me. She said, 'Oh, Dad, you should put that in a folder called nobody cares.' Okay, not everything I learn will be in this book. And then the question became, 'What is Lin-Manuel learning from this story?' And if he's not learning anything from it, even if it's fun, it's got to go in the deleted scenes," says Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, author of Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Education of an Artist (Simon & Schuster). Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, the Notorius DPP, is charismatic as he is brilliant. Maybe some of that seasoning rubbed off on me. One can dream. He teaches English and theater at Portland State University. He received the Graves Award from the American Council of Learned Societies for outstanding teaching in the humanities. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the Atlantic and the New York Times. Wanna know how sickening Daniel is? He has a BA in history from Yale and a PhD in English from Harvard. Gross. Ew, right? Ew. You can learn more about Daniel's disgusting intelligence and equally freaky contributions to the culture at danielpollackpelzner.com [http://danielpollackpelzner.com/] and follow him on IG at danielpollackpelzner. This conversation was so lively and great and we talk about: * How he pitched Lin-Manuel Miranda on being his biographer * Being driven by curiosity * Having to earn scenes * The "fun of it" framing * Balancing salt, acid, fat, and heat * Maintaining a sense of play with the work * What Daniel learned from Lin-Manuel * And taking the harsh feedback from trusted readers Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"Characters make books. Why are these guys in opposition? And were they actually really? How can you be in opposition with someone you never met? How can you be in opposition with somebody who's essentially sharing the same plight you're sharing in the country? And that brings in the other character. It's Branch Rickey. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of this entire book. Branch Rickey is the puppet master of that entire period," says Howard Bryant, author of Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. We've got Howard Bryant (@howardbryantbooks) back on the show for Ep. 509.  Howard is the best-selling author of several books and his latest is Kings and Pawns: Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson in America. It's published by Mariner Books. Howard's book takes a new framing on two iconic Black American icons of the 20th century. Very few people know much about Paul Robeson, who was a brilliant football player, but perhaps more famous as a baritone singer and stage actor. Jackie Robinson was the first Black American to play major league baseball, breaking the color barrier in baseball. The two were separated by some twenty years, never met in person, but were pitted against each other during the second Red Scare, kings turned into pawns. The authoritarian, McCarythian overreach of the era very much echoes our current moment. Robeson's career, his life, was ruined. It's a complicated story brilliantly orchestrated by one of the best writers this country has on offer. Howard is the author of The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron, Juicing the Game: Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball, Rickey: The Life and Legend of an American Original, The Heritage: Black Athletes, A Divided America, and the Politics of Patriotism, and Full Dissidence: Notes from an Uneven Playing Field, and he also was the guest editor of The Best American Sports Writing Series. You're in for a treat. You can learn more about Howard at howardbryant.net [http://howardbryant.net/] and follow him on IG @howardbryantbooks. In this episode we talk about: * When you know it's a book * Who are your stars? * How he reshaped the book by fixing the introduction * How he bridged the gap between Robinson and Robeson's timelines * How Branch Rickey, this vaunted angle of integration, wasn't exactly so holy * And Howard's favorite thing about writing Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"I spent several months  trying to narrow down the cast. I had access to so many people with interesting stories. But what [my agent] said to me over and over again was, 'narrative arc, narrative arc,' all the time. What he needed to know in order to sell the book was like, 'Where does this book start? And if you can't tell me where it ends, at least tell me what are the ups and downs? What's gonna happen along the way?" says Alison Lyn Miller, author of Rough House: A Father, a Son, and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory (Norton). Who is our guest this week? It would appear to be Alison Lyn Miller (@alisonlynmiller on IG), author of Rough House: A Father, a Son and the Pursuit of Pro Wrestling Glory. It's published by Norton. This is a great book and it's an immersive story in an oddball subculture of amateur professional wrestling. It follows Hunter James, a young man who eschewed the traditional path, the path his father wanted for him, to pursue this dream of becoming the next superstar of the WWE. You're gonna think I'm crazy, but this book has so many parallels to being a writer. The luck you need, the timing you need, the skill you need, the perseverance you need, the envy they feel, the subjectivity, voice, style, individuality. But we writers rarely need the abs. But don't we all want the abs. So Alison is a freelance journalist based out of Georgia, which put her in direct overlap with this subculture of "backyarders," these aspirational wrestlers and hobby wrestlers. It's easy to poke fun at wrestling as fake. Well, it isn't fake, so much as it's scripted brutality. It's danger adjacent, though there's always physical risk when jumping, flipping, and kicking. Alison witnessed it all and delivers a heartfelt tale of ambition and striving, of a blind belief in the self. In this conversation, we talk about: * Not being able to throw everything in the book * Being motivated by slights * Finding the narrative arc * The year it took Alison to write her proposal * How wrestling mirrors humanity * Making the writing approachable * And maybe we should all be play fighting in our underwear Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"Practically speaking, mostly what I'm doing is I'm  writing in a hotel room and then writing in the taxi, and then if the TSA queue is long, I might whip my laptop out and balance it on the stanchion and do some more writing, and then get on the other side and write in the lounge and then write on the plane, and whether that means that the laptop's nearly vertical because I'm on a discount airline with with terrible seat pitch, just writing. And so that's it, right? What my real practice is ... I just goddamn write," says Cory Doctorow, author of Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It. This is exciting. We've got Cory Doctorow on the podcast today for Ep. 507. Cory is the author of more than 30 books of nonfiction and fiction, his latest being Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About it. It's published by MCD, an imprint of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Ever wonder why Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, and Apple suck ass? This book will explain why they do and how they got there and maybe, just maybe, how we can get out of this mess. Did you know that Apple factories in China installed suicide nets so workers couldn't kill themselves? Think about that the next time you upgrade your phone. I'm ready for a new computer and it will likely be a Mac, even though they've gotten shitty over the years. Point is we all have blood on our hands. Cory is prolific, his blog posts epic, his books prescient and important. You can learn more about him at craphound.com [http://craphound.com/] or read his blog at pluralistic.net [http://pluralistic.net/]. He is a science fiction author, activist, and journalist. In 2020 he was inducted into the Candadian Science Fiction Hall of Fame and he is a special advisor to the Electronic Frontier Foudnation (eff.org [http://eff.org/]), a nonprofit group that defnds freedom in tech law, policy, standards and treaties. You could spend a year or two reading nothing but Cory Doctorow books and, I might add, you'd be better for it. He's one of the good guys, man, and he's out to help us understand the internet. So in this episode we talk about: * Internet literacy * His ongoing relationship with his audience * Getting a book done in six weeks * Platform decay * What exactly enshittification is and how Substack is slouching toward it * And the influence of the writer Judith Merril Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"I feel like many of us can relate to that, like, that's the trough of despair, right? Like, that moment where you're energetic optimism, diving in, and then, like, that's the wall of regret, where you're like, 'What was I thinking? This is not a story,'" says Alexandra Marvar, whose piece on Lummie Jenkins was revived by The Atavist. Today we Alex Marvar, this month's featured Atavist writer, but this is something of a twist. Seyward Darby, who we will hear from in a sec, has launched an initiative called "Revived." The idea being to resurrect long lost stories that are no longer available online. These stories that for one reason or another … disappeared. Seyward calls it a crisis of impermanence. You can learn and read more at magazine.atavist.com [http://magazine.atavist.com/]. Alex is a freelance writer and photographer. Her work has been appeared in the Believer, The Guardian, The New York Times, Vanity Fair and many others. She's kind of a boss. She even won the prestigious East Knox Middle School's 1995 DARE Student Essay Contest. She interviewed Iggy Pop for a documentary and got her picture taken with the punk legend, so, yeah, Alex is kinda sorta wicked cool. In our part of the conversation we talk about: * Money * Revisiting her younger self * The trough of despair and the wall of regret * Borrowing trust * Saggy middles Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"We always were having conversations about, if we can't solve it, what then? What is this about? Why isn't it solved? And what is our job? Is the job of a journalist to solve crimes? No, it's to document. So what are we documenting? We're documenting what had to happen for there to be no answer in a situation where there should be an answer," says Leah Sottile, reporter, writer, Hush. "Sometimes making yourself uncomfortable is the way to find new creativity, or to challenge yourself to find a smart idea within that," says Ryan Haas, reporter, producer. Today we've got a fun one with CNF Pod regular Leah Sottile, investigative journalist, podcaster, author of Blazing Eye Sees All and When the Moon Turns to Blood. And we also have her long-time collaborative partner Ryan Haas. They are primarily here to talk about season 2 of Hush, an incredible series put out by Oregon Public Broadcasting that chronicles how a small town has, to date, failed to bring closure on the death of 18-year-old Sarah Zuber in 2019. The red herring of it all is that it starts like a classic true crime show, but it quickly becomes an interrogation of the true crime genre. One of Leah's great lines is that this isn't true crime so much as it is bureaucratic horror in the rural town of Rainier, Oregon. I love getting a chance to chat with Leah, and this was special to hear from Ryan Haas, too, who up until recently spent more than a dozen years at OPB. She and Leah worked on the epic Bundyville Podcast together and two seasons of Hush. I'm gonna miss Hush because I would run five miles listening to primarily Leah, though Ryan pops in every now and again, narrate this incredible story about what happens when journalism folds up shop in a small town, when the greek choir of Facebook is the primary news source, when power-hungry people leverage a tragedy for personal gain, when law enforcement becomes lax. In this episode, they talk about: * The Grid of Doom * The evolution of their partnership * How they push each other * Interrogating the true crime genre * White board conversations * Being open to where the reporting goes * Being open to complication * Finding the cliff hangers * And breaking news! The future of Leah and Ryan's work Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"You're constantly asking lean, open, neutral questions that start broad and then narrow, and you're asking more lean, open, neutral questions based on their answers. When you do that, it tells the subjects that you're actually listening to them very intensely, and you're asking questions based on the things that they say. And that accelerates trust and intimacy, I think, in a better way than kind of betting on your personality," says Seth Wickersham, the bestselling author of American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback and an ESPN.com senior writer. Seth Wickersham is back. He is an ESPN.com [http://espn.com/] senior writer, investigative reporter, the NYT best-selling author of It's Better to Be Feared and, most recently, his best selling American Kings: A Biography of the Quarterback, it's published by Hyperion. We had a tight window to get this interview done. It was 30 minutes and after the edit it was closer to 25. He was gassed. I think he did this as a favor since I'd been on his ass since July about this book. Well, mainly on his publicists' asses, then I had to go over their heads. Sidebar: sometimes I think tight interviews are GREAT. Tony the Tiger level great. You can't cover quite as much ground and get into the granularity of certain things, but there's still so many great takeaways from this episode even though it's half as long as the usual. Seth talks about: * Getting to the heart of the matter * Interviewing vs. conversations, and how he bristles at the "conversation" angle * Establishing trust * Writing out questions, but being OK with deviating * How doing all this book promotion is just pennies in the bank * His relationship to quarterbacking * How he vetted the main quarterbacks he featured in American Kings * And how the quarterback is a vector for American ambition Seth is one of the good guys. You can't say that about everyone. He's a heavy hitter, he's steady in the pocket, and his eyes are always downfield. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"I will always go back to the well, and I will write until I die," says Jason Brown, author of Character Witness. Jason Brown is here. He is a brilliant short story writer and the author of the memoir Character Witness (University of Nebraska Press). It's an incredible book and we recorded this conversation at the end of October as the fourth and final LIVE podcast of the year at Gratitude Brewing here in Eugene.  Jason, as luck would have it, teaches at the University of Oregon in its writing department, forging the young minds who will publish in the most obscure lit journals, the future bitter podcasters of America, sorry, speaking from experience. I'm projecting, OK? But thanks to Jason and his clout with the University, we had our biggest gathering of the year, live and in person. There's something pretty rad about the in-person jam. Jason can be found at writerjasonbrown.com [http://writerjasonbrown.com/]. He writes fiction and nonfiction and was a Stegner Fellow and Truman Capote Fellow at Stanford University where he taught as a Jones Lecturer. He has received fellowships from Yaddo and Macdowell colonies. He taught for the MFA program at the University of Arizona and directs the MFA program at the U of O here in Eugene. He's the author of the collection Driving the Heart and Other Stories, Why the Devil Chose New England For His work and his work as also appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, Best American Short Stories, The L.A. Times, and The Guardian, among many others. This is getting obnoxious. In this conversation we talk about: * Persistence * Hiking out from the moment * The atmospheric river of rejection * Escape velocity * Woodworking * Rule breakers * Maturing around himself * And working with Tobias Wolff Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"Take pride in your rejections. It's a tough industry for putting yourself out there. You're like, doing a ton of work up front, not knowing if anyone will be interested in it. It's very easy to feel deflated about it. Your rejections are reaching for things that maybe aren't easy reaches," says Christa Hillstrom, writer of 14,445 and Counting for The Atavist. It's that Atavistian time of the month. Not much by way of spoilers, but you know you're in for a double dose of CNFin'  insights as we will hear from editor-in-chief Seyward Darby and, of course, the writer of this month's feature, Christa Hillstrom. Her story is titled 14,445 and Counting: Inside a Texas nurse's quest to document the life and death of every woman killed by a man in America. You can read the story at magazine.atavist.com [http://magazine.atavist.com/]. A sub is only $25 a year. No, I don't get kickbacks; yes, I pay to subscribe as well. I'm the hipster doofus of the people. The Atavist doesn't usually do profiles, per se, but this profile is of Dawn Wilcox and her "sacred work" of logging every femicide in the country, which is to say violent deaths directly against women by men. It's a tough one, not gonna lie. Not because it's not well done, but because, well, read the title. OK, so this piece is pretty heavy, but it's a story of obsession and what the central figure calls her "sacred work" to bring attention to this epidemic of sorts. The credits for this piece are: Ed Johnson was the art director, Sean Cooper copy edited it, Emily Injeian fact checked it, Naheebah Al-Ghadban illustrated it and Jonah Ogles and Seyward Darby edited this suckah. Christa Hillstrom is a freelance journalist based in the Pac Northwest, but hailed from Minnesota originally and even attended Northwestern's grad program in journalism. Doesn't get better than that. She's an award-winning reporter, editor, and multimedia producer in human rights, global health, gender-based violence, and trauma/resilience. We talk about: * The little treasures in research * The cost of doing this kind of reporting * Outlining * Task initiation * How she wrote herself into this story * Justing doing the writing * And taking pride in your rejections Check out her story at magazine.atavist.com [http://magazine.atavist.com/] and check out this conversation … right now. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"It's not actually about the questions you ask. It's about shutting up," says Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of We Survived the Night. It's episode 501 with Julian Brave NoiseCat, author of the memoir We Survived the Night. It's published by Knopf. It's a pretty spectacular debut and we have a lively chat about it and the writing and structuring of it. Julian is a writer, filmmaker, powwow dancer, and student of Salish art and history.  Julian, man, what a cool dude. He really came to play ball, which is fun for me. His memoir blends personal history, family history, cultural  history, coyote lore, and even some journalistic spurs in the storytelling, which makes it a shapeshifting text, much like his coyote ancestors. The book has been getting a lot of attention and deservedly so. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post. He has won many awards for his journalism and his debut documentary, Sugarcane, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival. He is a proud member of the Canim Lake Band. He is @jnoisecat on IG and in this conversation we talk about: * His early vision for the book * Hidden histories * How he aimed for a woven text * How the book was a study in transformation * Non-uni-direction assimilation * Writing what you don't know * And his Bob Caro story Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"Anything beats writing. Writing is tough," says John McPhee, staff writer for The New Yorker and author of more than thirty books of nonfiction. Hey CNFers, this is Episode 500 of The Creative Nonfiction Podcast, the show where I speak to tellers of true tales about the true tales they tell. There are kilometer stones like 100, 200, 300, and 400, but this one, this is a milestone and it features the writer and journalist who made me want to write narrative nonfiction in the first place: John McPhee. John is a titan, a soft-spoken titan. He is the author of more than 30 books, including A Sense of Where You Are, Levels of the Game, his Pulitzer Prize-winning Annals of the Former World, and the book that made me want to write nonfiction: The Survival of the Bark Canoe. John is 94 years young, still lives in Princeton where he has taught an exclusive masterclass on factual storytelling, a class taken by the likes of David Remnick and the late Grant Wahl, I believe, among countless people who have gone on to write and report with distinction. He's been a staff writer for The New Yorker since the 1960s when William Shawn was the editor. Not long thereafter, he was offered a job to teach at his alma mater Princeton University and he famously edited students' submissions not unlike how Shawn edited him at The New Yorker. He's written about such wide ranging topics from basketball, to tennis, to bark canoes, to Alaska, to lacrosse, to oranges, to myriad topics in geology. John is synonymous with thinking through structure and coming up with unique structures for most of his stories, each one something of a fingerprint: no two are alike and the facts borne out from this intensive, slow reporting dictate the shape of the story he has locked into. His work is methodical and patient. He hangs out. He fills notebook after notebook, rarely uses a recorder, maybe only if there's someone speaking in such technical jargon that there's no way to keep pace. His career has been this wonderful balance of give and take: teach for most of the year and not write; then write and not teach. John is unassuming and gentle and an example of how you can do this work without bombast or pyro and still be riveting and sometimes downright hilarious. So we talk about: * The influence of his high school English teacher Olive McKee * Living room fighters * Writing on spec * The notebooks he's used for decades * How a lack of confidences is an asset * What a good editor does * Writing as teaching * How having a plan frees you to write * The panic of having not written leads to productivity * And how proud of his daughters he is Parting shot on what it all means at 500 and maybe where I see the show going for the next 500. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"You start to wonder was it all worth it? Or what's the point in trying to do it again? You know, if there's going to be more disappointment in the future. I think it is something that you know probably just changes as you go on, regardless, right? I want to get that second book under my belt so it's not all just on this one, this one baby, you know?" says Maggie Mertens. Maggie is the author of Better, Faster, Farther: How Running Changed Everything We Know About Women (Algonquin Books). It's a brilliant book that traces the advancement of women's athletics through running. Hard as it is to believe, but it was thought that women couldn't, nay, shouldn't run farther than 800 meters. Running might affect their fragile constitution, they might even ruin the work place … there's a name for headlines like that one: They're called subscription cancellers. [Context: The New York Times ran a podcast headline with its conservative columnist asking "Did Women Ruin the Workplace?" Anyhoo … Maggie is making the freelance workplace a good time, thank you very much, and it's a pleasure to get to celebrate her approach to the work and her incredible book that came out in 2024. So Maggie's work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, NPR, Sports Illustrated, ESPNw, Creative Nonfiction, among others. She has a Substack called My So Called Feminist Life at maggiemertens.substack.com [http://maggiemertens.substack.com/] and she does much of social media-ing on IG @maggiejmertens and you can learn more about her and her work at maggiemertens.com [http://maggiemertens.com/]. So Maggie and I talk about: * The long book writing process * Community * Time pegs * Strict deadlines for the self * How she named her chapters in Better Faster Farther * Taking the wins * And the post-book malaise Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"I have this desire to write as a novelist might write but write nonfiction," says Sasha Bonét, the author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters (Knopf). Today we have the brilliant writer, the brilliant mind, Sasha Bonét, author of The Waterbearers: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters. This book is a masterpiece that chronicles the matriarchal lineage of Sasha's family, and the pain, and the struggle, and the triumph of will, of the slow, methodical, generational march forward and the residue of generational trauma, what we can outrun and we can never outrun. Damn, man, it's something of a family epic that brought to mind A Hundred Years of Solitude to me in its scope, in its sweep. I don't know. Maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about. Sasha is a writer, critic, and editor living in the socialist hellscape of New York City, woot, woot! Her essays have appeared in the Paris Review, Aperture, New York Magazine, Vogue, and BOMB, among others. She earned an MFA from Columbia University and teaches nonfiction writing at Columbia's School of the Arts and Barnard College. You can learn more about Sasha at sashabonet.com [http://sashabonet.com/] and follow her on the gram @sasha.bonet. This is a rich conversation about: * Community * The in-between place * Not holding back * Her influences * Her writing practice * And how jazz informs her writing She's also good friends with G'Ra Asim, who appeared on these podcast airwaves way back on Ep. 256. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"I kinda hate it when people say writing is fun," says Jack Rodolico, author The Atavist original "The Blue Book Burglar." Today we feature Jack Rodolico, who is a bit of an audio maven, but he comes to us hot off the Atavist presses to talk about "The Blue Book Burglar: The Social Register was a who's who of America's rich and powerful— the heirs of robber barons, scions of political dynasties, and descendants of Mayflower passengers. It was also the perfect hit list for the country's hardest-working art thief." It's a fun, rollicking read, not too heavy, not really heavy at all, merely a great caper. Batting leadoff is lead editor Jonah Ogles, so we talk about his side of the table about what less experienced writers can learn about pitching the Atavist and how Jonah worked with Jack to fix the structure of the piece. As always, really rich stuff from the editing side of things. A bit more about Jack Rodolico, the dude's got it going on … His work has appeared in The Boston Globe, NPR, 99% Invisible, and NHPR … He's earning an MFA in fiction, and that's really helping him with his nonfiction writing, as you'll hear in a moment. You can learn more about Jack at his website journalistjack.com [http://journalistjack.com/]. In this conversation we talk about his Atavist piece, writing fiction, earning trust, why you can't pay sources for information, how he organizes his research and cites his work, beginnings and endings, and how he didn't necessarily want to be a journalist, rather he wanted to be a writer. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"So much misery. It is so much misery. It is so hard. It's not natural, locking yourself in your room for three years to focus on one person is not mentally healthy. Leigh Montville, great, great writer, said to me years ago, he's like, 'It's an unnatural thing. You spend two years in a hole to come out for two weeks, you know?'" — Jeff Pearlman, author of Only God Can Judge Me. Today we have Jeff Pearlman returning to the show to talk about his 11th book, his latest book, Only God Can Judge Me: The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur (Mariner Books). Jeff has made a career out of being a sports writer, so when I heard he had turned his biographical eye toward a hiphop icon from the 1990s, I was especially intrigued by how he would approach it. It's the kind of book he could pursue after having proved himself ten times before, with a few of his books becoming coveted NYT bestsellers. He interviewed close to 700 people for the book … that's how you do this. THAT is how it's done. The first time he was on, I think I annoyed him a bit with my questions on "craft." He kind of bristled at the idea that it was a "craft," which maybe he thought was too cute a word to put on it. To him, it's fucking work. You make all the calls. Then you make more. You go to the locations. You knock on doors. You report, report, report. It has more to do with tenacity and rigor than art … so I made sure I steered clear of things that felt too crafty this time around. Jeff is all over the place. By that I mean he's got a YouTube presence with The Press Box Chronicles, a TikTok presence with more than 300,000 followers. He has a podcast, Two Writers Slinging Yang (still waiting for my invite), a political Substack called The Truth OC, and his writing/journalism Substack The Yang Yang. He's a writer in his 50s and he's tremendously nimble. He understands, even with his platform and profile, that nobody is going to champion your book like you can. Honestly, we can all take a page out of his book and how he has embraced the ever-changing playbook for book promotion.  In this conversation Jeff and I talk about: * Book promotion * Finding the little guys * How he handled another Tupac biography publishing during his research for this book * The misery of it all * Conversations he had with Jonathan Eig, the PP winning author of King: A Life * Jeff's favorite "version" of Tupac * And hitting the "fuck-it" stage. All great stuff, as you might come to expect from speaking to Jeff Pearlman. His audio was a bit muddy. It's not as great as I would have liked but I think the message carries the day. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"When I came in [to Longreads], I didn't come in and say, I think we need to grow aggressively. I said, 'Let's figure out who we are. Let's figure out what other people aren't doing, that we do , and that we can do better.' And so the only real thing that changed when I first came in was to try to make the editors known quantities," says Peter Rubin, head of  publishing at Automattic, where he works primarily with Longreads, but also The Atavist Magazine. Today we have Peter Rubin. He's on the pod to talk about a lot of things, but he's also drumming up attention for a membership drive for longreads.com [http://longreads.com/], a hub of curation for the best longreads on the web, first started by Mark Armstrong. Longreads has since gone onto publish original works of criticism, journalism, and personal essays and won a National Magazine Award for best digital illustration in 2020. In conjunction with with Oregon Public Broadcasting, they produced Bundyville, the hit podcast that made Leah Sottile something of a household name (shoutout to her new season of Hush). He spent many years at Wired Magazine and he's also the author of Future Presence: How Virtual Reality is Changing Human Connection, Intimacy, and the Limits of Ordinary Life, which came out in 2018, but with Chat GPT going full porn for verified adult users (what could possibly go wrong?), Peter's book seems oddly of the moment … also it's only seven years old, but I guess in tech that's like the stone age. You can learn more about Peter from his very stripped down website ptrrbn.com [http://ptrrbn.com/], yeah, he hates vowels, don't come at him with vowels, or on the gram @provenself.  In this conversation we talk about: * Finding diamonds in the rough * How he cultivated his editor eye * Being merciless in the edit * Figuring out the new identity of Longreads when he took over in 2021 * Curation * And the Longreads membership drive Visit longreads.com [http://longreads.com/] to read more and to pony up … that's what I'm going to do, for you people who think I get handouts, just know that I'm not that savvy. Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"As a reader, if I were a fan reading this book, I want the good, the bad and the ugly. I want you to rip the band aid off and tell the truth. Because, from my from my experience, I've read a lot of memoirs that are super boring and just fluff," says Jeremy X. Wagner, co-author of Curtis Duffy's Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky Publishing). We have Jeremy X. Wagner on the show today. This dude is a stone-cold badass and the co-author/ghost writer of Fireproof: Memoir of a Chef (Dead Sky Publishing). Jeremy, man, he's a heavy metal musician and founder of the death metal band Broken Hope.  He's the author of the novels Rabid Heart, which was nominated for the best horror novel at the 2019 Splatterpunk Awards, and the novel The Armageddon Chord. He has a new novel coming out in January titled Wretch, so stay clued into jeremyxwagner.com [http://jeremyxwagner.com/] for more info on that. He's the CEO of the TV/film company Aphotic Media and the indie publishing company Dead Sky Publishing. He has a very varied creative life which I find inspiring and really fucking cool. In this conversation we talk about: * How he became an accidental publisher * Playing guitar * Being turned on to Ride the Lightning * Passion and imagination as a driver * Learning the business inside and out * Competition * Trust * And how he translated Curtis's voice onto the page Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]

"This has to be meaningful to you. It has to be a story that won't leave you alone, a story that you're willing to rearrange your calendar for," says Masha Hamilton, whose Atavist Magazine story is titled "I've     Gone to Look for America." Today we have Masha Hamilton, a journalist, a novelist, a fan of the show, a fan of Pitch Club. You'll want to visit mashahamilton.com [http://mashahamilton.com/] to learn more about her wide-ranging career covering the world. She's the author of five novels and trying to sell her sixth. She was at one point the director of communications and public diplomacy at the US embassy in Kabul. Her story for the Atavist is about her driving the entire length of I-95 with her photographer son Cheney, and stopping at just about every rest stop to speak with strangers about how they feel about our country. "Conversations and revelations about an ailing nation along Interstate 95." Man, those Atavist editors sure can write the hell out of a dek. Guess who's back!? Seyward Darby! Do your best Kermit the Frog dance. Very nice to hear her and this piece challenged Seyward in ways I didn't see coming: Meaning, she didn't share Masha's optimism or hope. Seyward, for lack of a better word, disagreed with it, so there was an interesting tension she brought to the edit. For Masha's part, we talk about: * Novels as complimentary to her nonfiction * Covering societies in change * Healing through story * How this was piece was a therapy session * Accelerated intimacy * Endings * Middles * Finding the meaning * Writing you rearrange your calendar for * And belonging as practice Order The Front Runner [https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-front-runner-brendan-omeara?variant=43044900962338] Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm [https://rageagainstthealgorithm.beehiiv.com/] Welcome to Pitch Club [https://welcometopitchclub.substack.com/] Show notes: brendanomeara.com [http://brendanomeara.com/]